Survivor and Aurora Borealis: Two Fantasies of the Northland
By John Walters
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About this ebook
A young woman in the frozen northlands rescues a centuries-old creature from a hunter's trap. After she learns to communicate with him, he tells her his amazing tale of shipwreck and survival.
John Walters
John Walters recently returned to the United States after thirty-five years abroad. He lives in Seattle, Washington. He attended the 1973 Clarion West science fiction writing workshop and is a member of Science Fiction Writers of America. He writes mainstream fiction, science fiction and fantasy, and memoirs of his wanderings around the world.
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Survivor and Aurora Borealis - John Walters
Survivor
The creatures looming over me were terrible to behold. Folds of gray skin wrapped their bloated bodies. At the end of their wing-like flippers long, slim digits like fingers fluttered. Their yellowed eyes with enlarged black pupils were not the eyes of wild beasts; they possessed intelligence, cunning, discernment. As they appraised me I felt something reach into my mind, like the probe of rough, filthy fingers. I wondered if the long stretches of light and darkness, the relentless freeze, the loneliness, and the indifferent silence had driven me mad. I had no idea how long I had been staggering across the pack ice in my last burst of reserve strength, but I had fallen and had been unable to rise. Now I craved the long sleep of death to free me from this dreadful apparition.
* * *
We sailed out of London on what we supposed was the auspicious day of May 19th, 1845. Under the command of Sir John Franklin were 134 men and two ships: the Erebus, captained by James Fitzjames, and the Terror, with which I sailed, captained by Francis Crozier. At the outset, expectations were high that we would be the ones finally to traverse the Northwest Passage from its beginning in the Davis Strait all the way to the Bering Sea. Many brave men had gone before us, endured the dangers of the arctic, and mapped out a goodly portion of the route. Now it was our destiny to be the culmination of the effort, to assay the last uncharted portions of the Canadian Archipelago, to see the heroic task through to completion.
Our spirits soared as we sailed past towering ice mountains and entered Lancaster Sound. Five men had abandoned the expedition before we entered the ice. Cowards we supposed them, but perhaps they alone had premonitions of our impending doom. Lancaster Sound teemed with the strange beasts of the north: whales, seals, walruses, white bears, and birds innumerable. Surely, thought we, in this land of abundance we would not lack for sustenance.
Onward through Barrow Strait to Beechey Island we forayed. There we wintered, and there we experienced the true terror of the north: the long days and nights of silence and darkness, the flickering sorcery of the aurora borealis, the creaking of the ice crushing upon the ships, the lack of diverting pastimes, the sense of abandonment and isolation. Three men died that first winter. We buried them beside the harbor and erected a stone cairn to their memory.
When the ice cleared we sailed south as far as Victoria Strait, where we found ourselves helpless wedged in heavy ice. There we spent our second winter, much more terrible than the first. When the first glimmer of light appeared after long months of darkness, hope rekindled in our hearts. Through the endless illumination of summer days without night we awaited the breakup and melting of the ice, but it never came. The days became shorter, the chill increased, and we realized with mounting dread that the ships would remain